Mailpiece creation systems such as mailpiece inserters are typically used by organizations such as banks, insurance companies, and utility companies to periodically produce a large volume of mailpieces, e.g., monthly billing or shareholders income/dividend statements. In many respects, mailpiece inserters are analogous to automated assembly equipment inasmuch as sheets, inserts and envelopes are conveyed along a feed path and assembled in or at various modules of the mailpiece inserter. That is, the various modules work cooperatively to process the sheets until a finished mailpiece is produced.
While the exact configuration of each mailpiece inserter depends upon the needs of a particular customer/installation, a mailpiece inserter will frequently employ modules for re-directing the feed path, e.g., ninety degrees, to accommodate the configuration of a customer's facility. More specifically, a mailpiece inserter may employ one or more Right Angle Turn (RAT) modules to produce an L- or U-shaped inserter feed path. In this way, the various inserter modules, together with the in-process mailpieces, are accessible to the operator(s) which may be centrally located within the bounded area of the inserter.
A RAT module typically comprises one or more roller assemblies, i.e., a drive and idler roller pair, disposed at an acute angle relative to the direction of the feed path upon receipt by the roller(s). Generally, the roller assembly is disposed at an angle of approximately forty-five (45) degrees such that the sheet material will enter the module by contacting the peripheral surface of the roller assembly along a first line of tangency, i.e., to one side of the drive roller, and exit the module after being driven about the peripheral surface of the drive roller, to a second line of tangency along the other side thereof. Consequently, the sheet material is redirected ninety (90) degrees.
While RAT modules of the prior art have proven successful and reliable for re-directing individual sheets of material, i.e., a single sheet of material captured between the drive and idler rollers, such modules are significantly less effective and/or reliable when re-directing multi-sheet collations. That is, when passing multiple sheets of material through a RAT module of the prior art, the sheets exhibit a propensity to skew, become misaligned, and/or do not maintain edge registration. Consequently, difficulties arise when inserting such collations into a mailpiece envelope. Specifically, insertion becomes difficult when attempting to fill an envelope with a collation which is skewed inasmuch as the internal side edges of the envelope pocket are no longer parallel to the side edges of the collation. Furthermore, when edge registration of the individual sheets of a collation is not maintained, i.e., are misaligned, the sheet collation may be oversized as compared to the pocket dimension of the envelope. Consequently, the envelope cannot be filled.
A need, therefore, exists for a Right Angle Turn (RAT) module which is capable of re-directing mailpiece collations while maintaining alignment of the multi-sheet collation, both in terms of sheet registration and skewing of the sheet collation relative to the receiving envelope.